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Woman who tried to assassinate Ford speaks out

Sara Jane Moore, the woman who tried to assassinate President Ford in San Francisco in 1975, emerged in public this morning and offered an apology for her actions.

In an interview on the "Today" show, Moore, now 80, described what life has been like since she was released from prison at the end of 2007 and tried to explain why she tried to kill Ford.

“I still believe if I hadn’t done it, someone else would.... It was a time people don't remember. We had a war in this country, the Vietnam War,” she told "Today." “The only way it was going to change was by revolution.”

The only woman to fire a shot at a president said it was only later, while spending time in solitary confinement, that she “had begun to realize that I'd been used.”
“I think that I was misled, that I was mistaken. I think I made a serious error,” she told "Today's" co-host Matt Lauer. “I had to learn later that everyone else didn't feel that way.”

Moore said she realized in prison that what she had done was wrong. "I think it was a serious error," she said.

The terms of her parole are very strict, requiring that she complete paperwork when she travels and let her parole officer know where she is at all times, Moore said.

She said she knew some people didn't think she should have been paroled.

“We have a Constitution, and we have laws. Regardless of who you are, there were conditions to be met for me to be paroled, and I met those conditions," she told "Today." “If people object to that, write your congressman and ask that your law be changed.”